


Promises

by FrustratedPoet1979



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Attraction, Emotions, M/M, Mortality, Non-Explicit Sex, One Shot, maybe two?, short life span, slight angst, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrustratedPoet1979/pseuds/FrustratedPoet1979
Summary: Remus arrives at a work Party to find someone there he keeps bumping into and can't say no to.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 23
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the song Promises by Sam Smith. I would love to know what you all think of this and if you would like to read more?

**Promises**

  
  


**Remus**

Remus walked into the hotel function room feeling completely unprepared for the scene in front of him. For countless times that evening he considered just turning around and going home. It was already quite late, the invitation had said three hours earlier so most people were already well on their way to plastered and making fools of themselves. He grabbed a couple of shots as a server carrying a silver tray made their way past him. He knocked them back one after the other, not caring what they were.

“REMUS!” he heard the exclamation of his best friend just before she launched herself at him. “I’m so pleased you made it.” she squealed into his neck as she hugged him tightly. Remus looked past her mass of red hair and glanced at the man following behind Lily like a lost puppy, who waved a single swipe across his chest in casual greeting before looking away obviously bored with the exchange. 

“Who’s that?” he asked in her ear so the guy in question couldn’t hear. 

“Oh don’t worry about him,” she said breezily. “That’s just James.” Remus took a closer look at the man who was trying very hard not to take any interest in them. _This_ was James? The man Lily worked with that she wouldn’t, and couldn’t shut up about for the whole past year. He was tall and quite good looking, in a slightly unkempt way, his broad shoulders filled the short-sleeved shirt he was wearing nicely. He dressed like he had a bit of money but not in a flashy way. Remus noticed the brand logo on the breast pocket and his expensive looking shoes. But then again, perhaps he was wearing his best get up to impress Lily. 

Before Remus could scrutinise further, his sight was completely taken by someone else standing off to the side of James. Someone much more his type. 

If Lily was still talking to him he didn’t hear any of it as his eyes locked with the other. 

“REMUS!” Lily almost yelled again, forcing him to break eye contact. “James is coming back to our place, with me. So could you be a darling and…”

“Not come home tonight?” Lily’s smile was relieved and she nodded. 

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll figure something out” he answered, not looking at her anymore. He felt her give him a quick peck on the cheek before she took James’ hand and melted into the people on the dancefloor.

  
  
  


**“** Hi,” Sirius told him, stepping up close once Lily and her latest flame had disappeared. “I was wondering if I would see you here. You look good.” His voice was soft and familiar as he looked him up and down like he was already undressing him. Remus looked back over at him just as intently, he was wearing the same black skinny jeans he always seemed to, and once again, Remus wondered how he managed to fit into them, especially knowing the package those trousers held as intimately as he did. On his top half he was wearing a jacobite shirt loosely tucked with the lace neck loose showing quite a bit of his sculpted chest

“I haven’t seen you in ages. I didn’t know you would be here.” Remus replied trying to keep his voice cool and snagging another shot from a passing waitress, but before he could down it Sirius took it out of his hand. 

  
  


“Hey, you don’t need that.” He told him, “let’s just go back to mine.” He was standing incredibly close to him now, his hip pressing against his own. Remus closed his eyes and licked his lips as Sirius’ free hand squeezed the tender spot at the top of his thigh with his thumb. Remus snapped himself out of it as he realised they were still standing by the entrance, in plain sight of everyone. He spotted a buffet table and made his way over to that instead. 

“I didn’t come here for you, I came here as a friend, for a friend, for Lily.” Remus stated, though he had perhaps hoped that Sirius would be here. They had been constantly bumping into each other for months now. At first their mutual attraction had been all desire, a heady need to just possess each other. The first time they hooked up at a nightclub Remus hadn’t even asked his name. But the last few times Sirius had started to make it clear that he wanted more. Remus wasn’t sure exactly how much he was prepared to give. He went to grab a plate but as he did so his hand was caught by Sirius. 

“Lily’s not here now, she’s gone home with my brother.” It took Remus a moment to register that. 

“Wait...what?”

“Hmm hmm.” Sirius confirmed lifting Remus’ hand to his mouth. “Stop, pretending you don’t want me.”

  
  


Remus swallowed uncomfortably as Sirius continued to make his pulse quicken.

“It’s not that, you know it’s not.” Remus couldn’t stop the tremble in his voice, he also couldn’t stop his brain from trying to process this new piece of information, and pulled his hand out of Sirius’ grip before his mind became distracted again, “I’m sorry but I have to ask. James is your brother?”

Sirius shrugged a non committal gesture, “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but essentially yes he is. But you and I both know you don’t want to talk about him.” If it was possible Sirius stepped in even closer to him than he had the first time. Remus felt Sirius’ stubble brush against his earlobe as he spoke quietly into his ear. “Do you not want to be seen with me?”

Remus stepped back so he could look him in the eye properly. 

“That’s unfair.”

Sirius’ look he gave back spoke volumes. “You think so?” Sirius squinted at him, “I’m the one you keep running away from, that you only meet in shadows, or fuck in an allyway. I’m the one who wakes up alone wanting more, and every time you get yourself twisted up with guilt and bolt.”

“I don’t feel guilty. I have no regrets.”

“Really?” Sirius sounded genuinely surprised. “Because from where I’m standing it certainly looks like you are ashamed of who you are, and that you don’t want to be out.”

  
  


“That’s not it, I  _ am _ out. It’s just, I’ve been burned so many times I don’t want to get hurt again. I’ve also hurt the feelings of a few people who might be in this room so I don’t want to shove it in their faces.”

“Who?” Sirius asked curiously, looking around the room. Remus fought down the sudden panic but he couldn’t keep the quaver out of his voice. He was not ready to share his reasons.

“I’m not talking about this here, and certainly not with you.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. Everything. I can’t really explain, except I know every time I see you, I can’t resist you and it scares the shit outta me.” Remus grabbed a champagne glass from the table and necked it; he was sharing too much. Giving too much of himself to this man who was essentially still a stranger, but knew his body more intimately than anyone ever before. 

  
  


“Hey.” Sirius grabbed his face, pressing his lips to his, before saying in a hoarse whisper. “You think this doesn’t scare me too? All I want is you to stop running from this, from  _ me.” _

All Remus could think to do in reply was kiss him again. He let himself be caught up in this moment and stopped thinking about anything else. “I'm not an easy person to know.” He said eventually, “my life is complicated. I have…” how could he tell him? How? It wasn’t fair to let him in. 

“Hey, I’m not an easy person either.” Sirius replied, pressing their foreheads together. “So will you come home with me? Will you stay with me, tonight?”

  
  


“I’ll stay,” Remus replied, his heart beating faster as he confirmed this. The adrenaline of just standing so close to this man. The man he’d met in so many random places. Never actually planning to, just always coming back to each other like there was an elastic rope connecting them. Remus wondered as Sirius took his hand and began walking them to the door if anyone he knew from work was here. He had never hid his sexuality from his colleagues but he didn’t want it becoming the newest hot gossip either. “I just need to be somewhere else,”

“Hey, you’ve promised me all night, and that’s plenty of time.”

*

Remus couldn’t stop rubbing Sirius’ arse as he was trying to open the door to his flat. Boldly he swept his hair from his neck and kissed behind his ear making sure his chin scraped against his neck as he did so, a motion that made Sirius fully stop what he was doing and push back against him a soft moan escaping his lips.

Their journey to get here, sitting apart in the Uber, fingers barely brushing as they made small talk with the driver had been a slow torture. Remus had never wanted him more than he did tonight. Every time they met it became more difficult to deny how much more he was feeling. Every time he was with him was an escape, a chance to feel normal, a chance to feel like he didn’t have an expiration date. Because Sirius Black made him feel like he was truly living, and not just existing. 

No sooner had the door closed behind them than Sirius was pushing him against the wall. Lifting his arms up over his head. Hands exploring, lips brushing. 

Leaving a trail of discarded clothes behind them as they actually made it to Sirius’ bedroom. 

Skin against super heated skin. 

Hands clutching white sheets. 

Moans cried out through the night. 

Tangled limbs. 

Passionate hearts. Beating, beating.

It didn’t seem to matter how close they clung to each other, how euphoric each climax. It just wasn’t enough for either of them. 

Eventually they had to succumb to sheer exhaustion and collapsed. 

When the sun rose and warmed their naked skin the unfortunate reality hit Remus again. 

This couldn’t last.

He needed to tell Sirius what was going on, because it wasn’t fair and he needed to give him an out before it was too late. This man deserved at least that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit I wrote the bulk of this in one day and was very excited to get it out there to you all lovely people of the internet. If I have missed any errors forgive me, and I hope you have a lovely non specific holiday event day.

**Part two**

**Sirius**

Sirius stretched lazily as he felt the sun hit his body waking him up gently. He had been having the most amazing dream, he had been walking along an endlessly long sandy beach holding hands with a smiling man with sad eyes, the same man that stalked his waking thoughts too. It wasn’t easy knowing you had fallen so hard and so fast for a person you knew only in a physical way, even harder knowing that man felt something too but seemed to be unable to be open about it. He brushed such negative thoughts aside, there was no point. His outstretched hand brushed against warm skin making him smile inwardly. He had stayed. His back cracked as he pushed his stretch as far as he dared, his whole body feeling beautifully used. That had been quite a night, so perfect it almost felt like it had been a dream too. His body started to respond to the direction his mind was going, he was definitely ready for another round. When he finally decided to open his eyes it was to see Remus looking back at him with an expression that deflated his amorous feelings in an instant, and made Sirius steel himself to be pushed away once more. It was the dear, John look, the I’m sorry but, the look Remus had worn every time he had told Sirius before now that this was the last time. Sirius dropped his smile and propped himself up on his elbow.

“Really? After what you said to me last night you are going to do this to me again?” He said hoping he would actually listen to the hurt in his voice. He was done pretending to be okay with this, he was tired of chasing a man who wanted to keep him just far enough away to not be in a relationship. There was no way Remus didn’t share his feelings, no way that they could have a night like that and he could still be cold and distant. When Remus reached out to him he rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed with his back to him, annoyed at himself for showing such vulnerability. He just felt so used, and the idiot he was he kept falling for it every time. “If you are going to go, then just go.” he looked around for something to throw on but none of the clothes he had worn last night had made it to the bedroom, and all his clean clothes were in the wardrobe on the side of the bed where Remus was.

“I wasn’t going to.” Remus said, sounding honest. But Sirius didn’t, couldn’t let himself believe it. Despite this, a tiny flutter hit him in the stomach and Sirius hated himself for daring to hope. He closed his eyes as Remus wrapped his arms around his chest. Sirius took a deep breath and resisted the urge to lean back into him, he had to stay strong and stop this endless spiral of rising hope then crushing rejection he found himself in with this man. But it felt so good when they were together, it felt so good to just think for a moment that they could be something more than whatever it was they were right now. How silly of him to believe that anyone would want do do more than just fuck him then throw him away. “It’s just,” and there it was. That but that Sirius had been waiting for. “I need to tell you something, something that might make you regret every decision you ever made when you first met me.”

“If you are going to tell me you have a wife or some bullshit like that then you can just-” Sirius grabbed a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around his waist as he was talking. He stood up and walked to the door not exactly sure where he was going to go but not wanting to look at Remus anymore. He studied the wall next to the door and considered punching it, wondering if that pain would match what was going on inside him right now.

“I’m dying.” Remus blurted making Sirius turn to face him in total disbelief. This was not anything near what Sirius had expected him to say, it knocked all the air right out of him and his legs suddenly felt like jelly he sat back down on the bed hard.

“This is some kind of bullshit.” he managed to say, wanting to believe this was just another play and not the truth, but it was all too real, he could tell by the pained expression on Remus’ face.

“I’ve lived the majority of my life so cautiously, never taking risks, not going out late, not drinking, only eating healthy foods. I spent so much of my life in dusty books, and library’s Preparing for that one day when I would have all the qualifications, one day when I would be able to have a good job, a nice house. I got a good job and I’ve been miserable in it A few months ago when I found out about - about,” he bit his lip and closed his eyes for a moment before carrying on. “I realised how much I had been preparing for some end goal that might never happen, so I decided to go do some living for once in my life. I’d never been to a club like that before, I was nervous and was about to leave, that was the night I first met you. I remember seeing you dancing, you looked so confident, you were mesmerising. I never thought in a million years you would take any notice of me, but you did and it made me feel like I was someone. I didn’t want to get too personal, I didn’t even ask your name. I never expected to see you again after that one time. I had fun with you, and I was feeling a little more confident, so I went out again to somewhere else, but every time I went out, every different place, I met you, and you were always so into me. And you are just so incredibly sexy. I just kept falling for you over and over. I’ve been selfishly allowing myself to say yes to you every time, knowing it meant a higher chance this would happen. This nightmare of a moment I’m living right now where I have to tell someone there is no future with me and let them go before either of us get too attached.” 

“How...what…? Heh?” Sirius blinked and tried to wrap his head around all this. This couldn’t be happening. He took a deep breath and tried to form a coherent sentence like an adult he was supposed to be. “So what is it? This thing that’s killing you?” It was an odd thing to say, to think that a person you had just had very long very physical, passionate sex with was dying, a man in his prime who showed no visible sign that he was even ill. He was a little thin perhaps, but many people were thin, it didn’t mean anything. He looked a lot healthier than most, Sirius couldn’t help scrutinising Remus’s body trying to spot any sign.

“I - have - a - tumor - in my brain.” said each word deliberately like it was difficult to get them out. “It’s inoperable. I have no symptoms, it doesn’t affect me in any way, it’s just in there somewhere wanting to kill me.”

Sirius slid back up the bed and was suddenly feeling very awkward around Remus, he wanted to hug him, to try and give some comfort but he wasn’t sure if it would be welcome right now. He settled to wrapping the sheet around both of them instead as he was suddenly feeling very cold. “Then, if you have no symptoms, how do you know? How did you find out?”

“I was in a car accident, not anything serious but I banged my head so they scanned it to rule out any bleeding and that’s when they found it.”

“Was it the accident that caused it?” Sirius felt that the ground under his feet was no longer stable, that the whole world had suddenly tilted 90 degrees. It wasn’t fair. Sirius didn’t think Remus could be any older than himself and this was what fate had in store for him, it just was not right. It was making him think about his own life in a completely new way. All his life he had felt out of place, like a jigsaw piece in the wrong box. Meeting Remus had been like finding something he didn’t know he had been searching for a matching piece to his puzzle. Now Remus wanted him to go before he got too attached, as hard as Remus had tried to keep him at arms length it had almost pushed Sirius harder to break through his defenses. He had never expected this as the reason he had been so distant. 

“The doctors said it could’ve been there for a while already, and it wasn’t caused by the accident. So I basically have a bomb in my head, a bomb that nobody knows what time it’s set to go off.” Sirius couldn't help himself; he leaned forward and kissed Remus. Just a soft kiss, a brief pressing of lips. It felt like the right thing to do in that moment and he felt he was right when Remus started to kiss him back, more intently. It took awhile for them to break apart, breathlessly panting. He knew it wasn’t going to solve anything but Sirius just desperately wanted to pull Remus down onto the bed with him and pretend that the last five minutes hadn’t happened. Remus looked to the ceiling and Sirius could tell he was close to tears. “I don’t want to do it, but I need to leave, and you need to stop pursuing me. The way you are looking at me, I can’t bear to see you looking at me like that, I can’t bear to see anyone look at me like that.

“Like what?”

“Like you feel sorry for me, like you want to look after me, like I need your sympathy, I don’t want that I don’t want any of that.” Remus pushed him away, stood up angrily and marched out the room. Sirius swore quietly then quickly threw on a pair of pyjama bottoms he spotted lying under his chair and went after him. He found him sitting on the stairs pulling on his jeans. He looked angry and upset. Sirius tried to think how he would react if he was in Remus’ situation. It was an impossible position to even try to put himself in.

“Don’t storm off. Don’t leave now. You have given me a lot to think about. It was a lot to process, I’m still trying” He sat down beside Remus but as soon as he did Remus stood up and grabbed what looked like his black T-shirt off the hallway floor. Sirius had a flashback of peeling it off him and kissing his chest, the wonderful sound Remus had made when he scraped his teeth against his ribs. The way Remus was just holding his shirt looking at it made him think that perhaps Remus was sharing the same memory. “You looked good in that, you looked even better when it was on the floor.”

“Don’t.” Remus whispered.

Sirius was just not having it anymore. The shock of all this was beginning to wear off, and he was realising what Remus was trying to do. Partly at least.

“Why not? I can still look and I can still remember. You may be dying but you are not made of stone and neither am I. If you are going to leave me forever then all I will have is the memory of how impatient you were to get us out of our clothes. The noises you make when I am sucking you off, and your hands pull my hair. You can walk out that door if you really want to but I don’t think you do. You can go, or you can sit down and you can let me think this through.”

“Stop it, stop making this more difficult. I want you to be happy, I want you to go on with your life, actually have a life, and I can, I can…”

“Go crawl away to some cave to die in? No. It’s your time to listen to me now you selfish fuck. Life dealt you a shitty hand and now your thinking the best thing you can do for me is let you just walk away. Like I’m going to thank you for your noble sacrifice on my behalf. That’s not happening. What kind of arsehole do you think I am that I would just agree with you and walk out when you told me what’s happening with you? The very first time I saw you in that horrendous dive of a club I felt something, I didn’t know what it was at the time. I knew I was into you more than anyone ever before. After the first time I didn’t expect to see you again either. I hoped, but not a great deal, London is a big place. Then when I did, it felt like I had been struck by lightning.” Remus hadn’t moved since picking up his shirt and was once again visibly fighting back tears. “You think that me knowing you have a time bomb in your head is going to make me want to go anywhere else? Do you think I am just going to stop thinking about you every fucking day if I never see you again?” 

“You are making this so hard.” Remus breathed deeply

“No, I’m not, I'm making it very easy. Like the dreamgirls say I’m not going.” When he saw Remus quirk a half smile at that it made hope surge up again. Making him move to stand before Remus once more.

“What?”

“You have given yourself a death sentence like you are going to cop it next week, you already said you don’t know how long you have. It is possible you could die next week, but what if you don’t, what if I get hit by a bus before you get struck down? What if you live another ten, or even twenty years wondering what could have been. Those are the kinds of odds I don’t mind chancing my happiness on. You going out and wanting to live a little was the smartest thing you’ve ever done. You met me, a man with the means for us to live an amazing life for however long that may be. We could do as much or as little as you want. There are so many things in my life I ran away from when they got too hard, but not this, not now, not you. I’m all in, and if we only have a week I don’t want to miss another second.”

“You actually mean that don’t you?”

Sirius grinned, “So are you going to stop being an idiot and kiss me?”

  
  



End file.
